Twitter CEO Gets His Own Account Suspended: Jack Dorsey’s Follower Count Plummets By A Few Million Due To Internal Glitch [Update]


Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and CEO, was left red-faced after his own social media platform suspended his verified account. Dorsey’s account might have disappeared for less than an hour, but he lost a few million followers.

The Twitter account belonging to Jack Dorsey vanished briefly Tuesday night before reappearing within half an hour. While the time was brief, Dorsey lost about 4 million followers. Any attempts to visit Jack Dorsey’s verified account around 9 p.m. E.S.T were futile. The dreaded “This account has been suspended” message scrolled across Dorsey’s page must have undoubtedly shocked his followers who numbered in the millions.

Before the suspension, Dorsey had close to 4 million followers on his Twitter account. However, when his account, replete with the highly coveted “verified” badge, resurfaced, Dorsey had to begin his fan following afresh. Those who kept on refreshing the page, managed to catch Dorsey’s account with just 142 followers, reported Cnet.

Dorsey later tweeted the suspension was an “internal mistake.” Without offering any explanation, he merely joked about the incident: “just setting up my twttr…again.” He was referring to the first tweet that was sent on the platform, by him, about 10 years ago.

Although the count had risen substantially, and might soon cross 620K, it will take some time before it manages to reach 4 million. Some social media users wondered if Dorsey could ever manage to get as many followers before the accidental suspension. Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal claimed Dorsey’s 3.8 million follower count was restored, but the account doesn’t seem to reflect the same.

Why was Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account suspended? It isn’t clear why the account was suspended or what caused the account to vanish or the drastic shrinkage in followers. Twitter’s representatives haven’t offered any explanation about the bizarre incident involving none other than their top boss.

Twitter users can choose to disappear from the micro-blogging social media platform. While the users can deactivate their own account on Twitter, only the platform reserves the right to suspend them. As a matter of policy, Twitter usually chooses to take down any account on a temporary basis following a barrage of complaints by users.

Normally, when a high number of users “flag” an account, the platform deems them to be either sending spam or abusive tweets. The suspension could last for a few days, or it could be permanent depending on the algorithms Twitter employs to judge how bad the account is. Apart from the tweets, Twitter could also suspend accounts it believes have been hacked or compromised. According to Twitter’s blog post, the platform has been very strict about its data usage policy. The company noted Tuesday that it was “Absolutely unacceptable and prohibited for developers to track or profile protesters or activists on Twitter.”

Twitter has been getting stricter with accounts and was observed to be eager to suspend those which the platform claimed violated its rules. However, it is unlikely any of these reasons could justify the suspension of Jack Dorsey’s account.

Social media experts believe Dorsey’s account might have been suspended because of a security threat. Earlier this year, several high-profile and verified accounts on Twitter, and some other platforms as well, were compromised by a team of organized hackers who call themselves OurMine. The group managed to gain access to some pretty big accounts that belonged to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Spotify’s founder and CEO Daniel Ek, among a few other prominent personalities. The team claimed it had no ill-intention, but merely wanted to highlight the multiple vulnerabilities of the platforms they had compromised. Interestingly, the group had been trying to peddle their digital security services that promised to fortify the social media accounts against further attacks.

[Update] It appears the glitch eroded some more followers. Jack Dorsey’s follower count is slowly climbing upwards.

[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]

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